My Internship
elevator pitch.pdflhsi chemmaoui april 28.pdfDr. Mendonca’s Lab primarily focuses on gaining a deeper understanding of the causes and prevention of radiation-induced cancer along with increasing the effectiveness of radiation treatments for certain types of rigorous cancers. My site is looking to improve radiation treatments by studying the effect of radiation on different cells under various conditions.
Learning and Skills
I am excited to be able to build my current skill set as well as develop new skills which I will use in my future endeavors. Of my current skills, I am looking forward to working on confronting my challenges and failures. I do not like letting my fears of failing stop me from exploring and trying new things. However, I do sometimes find myself struggling to cope with my failures, especially from an academic standpoint. I hope by working in Dr. Mendonca’s lab I am able to conquer and work through my fear of failure and become more confident in my skills as a researcher.
Throughout this experience I hope to strengthen my skills of sterile technique as I have a lot that I can approve on. I also hope to gain confidence in my abilities since I tend to underestimate myself in a different area. I would also like to gain a good understanding of the mechanisms and pathways of the experiments that I perform. I find that I will be able to use skills such as attention to detail and careful steps in my future career as a surgeon. Those skills will be vital especially when it comes to the operating room since you will be having people’s lives in your hands. I also find that having steady hands and taking careful steps is another important skill I will learn thorough my research journey which will also contribute to the skill I will need to have as a surgeon. I am excited about gaining a deeper understanding of the science behind my experiment and presenting I to others. I am also excited to widen my vocabulary with terms that I am continuing to learn throughout my experience. One of my favorite experiences so far was finally getting to perform the experiment by myself without any supervision. I felt like this was a great accomplishment as I have been working diligently through the past few weeks to fix any major and minor mistakes I was making.
Currently I have been improving my communication skills as I have been starting to work more independently in my experiment. In doing so I have also been able to expand my vocabulary in order to properly explain myself in emails to my supervisor whenever I need any help and they are not there. I have also faced quite a few challenges so far in which I have had to think critically to overcome the challenges and continue with a successful experiment. Furthermore, I would like to continue to work on my teamwork skills as I have been working independently on my experiments as the lab is designed to be. However, I would like to work on different ways that I can incorporate teamwork into my lab. I will continue to work on my skills by thinking of new ways that could better the experiment and discussing it with my team to improve the outcome. I will also improve my skills by keeping an open mind when it comes to learning in the lab because I will always discover new things during my research and learn how to apply them in different areas other than research.
It is exciting to get to work hands on with a lot of the procedures that would get introduced in my lab sections. I have also learned to be more independent in my labs and problem solve on my own especially during my organic chemistry lab.
My internship experience is quite unique in that I am usually working by myself with no supervision, so I have grown to be more responsible especially when it comes to my mistakes. I always try to problem solve my way through many issues that have come up and when the time comes, I own up to my mistakes. I have learned not to be less afraid when I make mistakes, and this has allowed me to gain more confidence in myself and improve my experimental skills throughout this semester.
My contributions helped impact the greater project as my experiments were logged in a database with other experiments to confirm that the results being achieved are statistically important to continue research into the specific cell lines that I was studying. My efforts mattered because I am contributing to furthering knowledge on an area of medicine that is known little about.
I have used a lot of these skills in my leadership positions on campus. I noticed that I am more confident in addressing people in a professional setting than I was before. I have also used these skills to boost my resume as well. In the next month I will make sure to focus on the areas that I am still developing in to make sure that I took full advantage of the opportunity I was given. After LHSI I will seek new opportunities that will allow me to challenge myself in new ways so that I can keep developing more skills that will make me a more competitive applicant to medical school.
The Workplace
I have noticed the friendly atmosphere of my internship. I feel that the friendliness of fellow researchers helps lighten up the mood in the lab especially if it becomes overwhelming at times. I think having a sense of community is important and it is something that I would like to be able to have in the future. In addition, I have also noticed how driven and passionate everyone is. I can really sense that everyone I meet is striving to make an impact through their positive attitudes and perseverance. I would like to be able to develop in that aspect especially going into the medical field as there will be tough times that I will need to push through.
Although my lab is pretty small and I only work with a handful of people, we all come from a diverse cultural background, and I have found that I learned so much from each person I work with. I have learned to further appreciate our differences.
Going into LHSI I thought I was going to be working in a lab where there was a lot of people. However, as I stated previously, I work in a smaller lab with a few people however I feel like this lab environment has allowed me to further improve my lab skills as I have nobody to turn to directly if I get stuck on something.
My workplace values having great problem-solving skills as most of the work is independent and you do not have anyone in the lab most of the time to ask questions to every time you get stuck. Furthermore, at my internship all ideas are valued, and questions are always welcomed. I enjoy these aspects in my ideal workplace and hope to find similar values in my future positions. However, one aspect that I would like to find in my ideal workplace that I do not have at my current position is more collaboration with other people as I am a social person.
Successes and Challenges
One instance where I felt successful was the first time, I had fully gone through the entire experiment by myself. I was even able to start up the x-ray machine and turn it off all by myself. This was quite exciting however I wouldn’t have been able to reach that point without my helpful supervisor who stayed with me answering all my questions and guiding me throughout the experiment along the way. I also had the help of my lab partner who is also an LHSI intern who I’d often exchange tips with.
The most challenging part of my experience is time management. Since my experiment is heavily time dependent, I am not able to just go in whenever I have any downtime. Furthermore, if I am not able to come in for my experiment due to any circumstance my experiment gets canceled for the week which can be a bit frustrating sometimes. However, I have worked with my supervisor and changed the dates of my experiment in order to have more lab time. Moving on to the spring semester I tried to schedule my classes so that I had more availability to work at my site.
Project Summary
These experiments have taken place to determine if the knockout of any spectific gene combination affects radiation sensitiveity more or less. The three combinations of gene knockouts are as follows: P53-/- , P53-/- & MDM2-/-, and P53-/- & MDM2-/- & MDMX -/-. P53 plays a key role in maintaining cell division and apoptosis. MDM2 and MDMX inhibit the functions of the P53 gene. A certain combination of the three may affect radiation sensitivity. There are also two experimental conditions. There is a 4 hour group that undergoes two shorter sets of radiation 4 hours apart and a 0 hour group that undergoes one long set of radiation. There is also a control group. From the data procured so far, it is evident that the 4 hour groups contain cells that survive longer. The 0 hour radiation seems to kill off cells quicker. The P53-/- & MDM2-/- group appears to have the least amount of surviving cells overall.